Translated from the Urdu by Ali Yusufzai
If you were to travel to Kashmir through Jammu Tavi station, further on from Kud you’d come across a small village, Batote, nestled in the hills. It’s a pleasant enough place; with a sanitarium for tuberculosis patients. It was eight years to this day that I had spent three months in Batote, and in this rejuvenating environment I even engaged in a naive youthful romance. Nowadays I have no affinity for that particular story.
After six or seven months in Batote, my friend called on me to visit his wife who was in the sanitarium grasping for her final breaths. The moment I arrived there a patient died and poor Padma’s already ragged breathing became even more laboured. It seemed like purely bad luck that as soon as I arrived, patients started dropping like flies in that small sanitarium. I can’t think of any other reason.
Whenever a bed became empty, or when the assistants had worn themselves out from work, cries of despair echoed in the hallways. All over the sanitarium a strange type of grey sorrow cast its shadow and those patients who had been holding onto a narrow thread of hope now found it unravelling, casting them into new depths of hopelessness.
Padma was completely petrified. Her thin lips would tremble and in the depth of her eyes I could see desperate questions swirling around.
A shout pierced the silence, ‘why?’ followed immediately by a terrified ‘no!’
*
After the third patient had died, I went outside to sit on the verandah and ruminate upon the connection between life and death. It was as if the sanitarium were a pickle jar and the patients were onions floating in vinegar. Every so often a divine fork came along and searched for the onion that had softened nicely, to pluck it from the jar. I know, this is an absurd simile but for some reason this image kept replaying in my mind. I couldn’t think of anything more profound than the fact that death is a very ugly thing indeed. You could be feeling fine until the smallest of ailments grabs hold of you one day and then you’re dead. Sometimes death is stranger than fiction.
I got up from the verandah and went inside. I must have only made it a dozen steps in when a voice came from behind, ‘have you come to bury number twenty-two?’ I turned to see two dark, smiling eyes against a white bed. As I was to learn later, these eyes belonged to a Bengali woman who, unlike the others, was there in the sanitarium patiently awaiting her own death.
‘Have you come to bury number 22?’ she repeated.
I felt as if we were not burying people here but mere numbers. But to tell the truth, at the burial of the last patient it never occurred to me, not in the furthest reaches of my mind, that he was a human being and that his death would leave any sort of void in the world.
I sat by her side to continue the conversation. In spite of her fearful illness, her black eyes remained fresh and bright.
‘I’m number four’, she said, continuing to smile. Then she said, rather casually, ‘You seem to take quite the interest in burning and burying these corpses’.
‘It’s not that…’, I stammered.
The short-lived conversation ended there and I went back to find my friend.
*
As usual, the next morning I went out for a stroll. A soft drizzle fell, rendering the surroundings beautiful and innocent, as if they were in a different world to the patients breathing in contaminated air nearby. The defiant pine trees, the mountaintops shrouded in blue mist, the rocks tumbling across the road, stocky cattle wandering… there was beauty in every direction. A beauty that I could rely on, with no fear that it could be stolen away.
As I made it back to the sanitarium, I immediately realised from the fallen faces of the patients around me that another number had been erased. Number eleven. Padma.
Her hollow eyes had remained open, frozen with fear.
The rain continued to fall, which made it difficult to gather up any dry firewood. Eventually, we managed to get a fire going and we surrendered this poor lady’s body to the flames. My friend sat by the fire and refused to move, so I went back to the sanitarium to collect his things. Once more, as soon as I entered, I heard that same Bengali woman’s voice:
‘You took your time’
‘Because of the rain we couldn’t find any dry firewood. So it took a while’
‘In other places you’d have shops for firewood. But I heard in this village you have to go here and there gathering up sticks by yourself’, she said.
‘I guess so…’
‘Sit with me please’.
As soon as I sat down on the stool next to her she asked me a strange question,
‘You must have been really happy to find some dry wood after searching for so long in the rain?’
She didn’t wait for a response, and without looking at me said:
‘So… do you ever think about death?’
‘I’ve thought about it quite a lot but haven’t managed to fully understand it,’ I replied.
She laughed and continued with a childlike innocence, ‘I’ve managed to understand a little bit, at least. If only for the reason that I’ve seen a lot of death… more than you could see if you lived a thousand times over. I’m from Bengal where one of our famines happens to be quite famous these days. I’m sure you know thousands upon thousands have died there - many stories have been published already, hundreds of articles written, yet still we can’t draw any patterns from this disaster. In the great bazaar of death I was able to think about it clearly’.
‘… what?’ I spluttered.
In the same even tone she continued, ‘I’ve realised that one person dying is a tragedy. Thousands of people dying is just a spectacle. Truth be told…the fear of death which once used to fill my heart has now disappeared completely. If you also saw ten or twenty funeral processions passing through the streets every day, don’t you think death’s true meaning would die too? What I have understood is this - crying over all these deaths is useless… it’s nonsense. In fact, all of these deaths are the most stupid thing of them all’.
‘Which people dying?’ I asked her.
‘Whoever it might be. It’s stupid… absurd. Drop a bomb on a big city, people die. Poison the wells - whoever drinks the water dies. Wars, famines and diseases are all absurdities. To die from these or from a roof collapsing on your head is the same. The worst death of all is the death of your heart’s true desire… to kill someone is nothing; destroying their essence is the true cruelty’.
She fell silent for a while. After turning over, she started up again, ‘I wasn’t so bitter before. To tell the truth I didn’t even have time to think about all of these things, but this famine has dragged me into a completely new world’.
As I listened, I’d been scribbling down some of her turns of phrase in my notepad as a kind of memento. Suddenly she stopped and turned towards me.‘What are you writing there?’
‘I’m a story writer. Whenever I hear something that interests me I note it down’, I replied.
‘Oh…well in that case let me tell you my whole story’.
So, for three hours, in a weak voice, she told me everything. I’ll try to recount it in my own words.
*
When the famine began in Bengal and people started to drop dead, Sakina’s uncle sold her for five hundred rupees to some wicked man who took her to Lahore, forced her to stay in a hotel, and immediately tried making money off her. The first man they brought to her for that purpose happened to be a quite handsome and well-built young fellow. Before the famine, when the clothes on her back and the next meal weren’t such huge concerns, Sakina used to dream of finding a man just like him to be her husband.
But here she was simply goods for sale.
Here, she was being forced to make a living from acts where… even picturing it sent a shiver down her spine. As she was being taken from Calcutta to Lahore she knew exactly what was in store for her—she was a perceptive girl. She knew full well that after a few days, after she started earning, she would be put to work in new and far off places. Even though she understood her captivity, she lived in hope, expecting an implausible rescue.
The rescue never happened. But a strength buried deep in Sakina emerged, and through a combination of her own intelligence and that young man’s naivety, she managed to escape from the hotel.
Now she was on the streets of Lahore and among new dangers. With each step she felt eyes upon her, as if the street’s glare would swallow her whole. In fact people weren’t looking at her specifically, but her youth, which wasn’t easy to hide. Some ogled her so blatantly it felt as if their eyes were drilling holes into her.
If she had been wearing gold, silver or pearl jewellery then maybe she would have been spared from people’s looks. Instead, she was guarding something altogether more precious, something that could easily be snatched from her.
For three days and three nights Sakina wandered all over. She was in a bad state. Starving. But she never resorted to begging because she feared her vulnerability would be taken advantage of again, those same empty hands dragged into some dark shack along with her chastity.
Sweets glimmered in storefronts. People wolfed down food in restaurants. All around her people ate and drank indifferently, carelessly. But it felt as if fate had left her with not even a crumb.
For the first time in her life she became conscious of the importance of food. No matter what, she couldn’t seem to get her hands on any. After four days of starvation, she even felt some nobility in her suffering, as if she were a martyr for hunger. Yet her body’s foundations were breaking down. The comfort Sakina would usually find in her spirit shrivelled up.
On her fourth evening on the streets, as Sakina was passing through a narrow alley, some spirit possessed her and compelled her to barge into someone’s home. As she went deeper inside she prayed that no one would jump out to grab her and undo all of her progress. Lost in her thoughts, she managed to reach a courtyard. Through a hazy darkness she spotted two water pitchers and alongside them, glistening trays piled high with pears, apples, pomegranates. Her eyes fixed on the pears and apples. A small plate rested on top of one of the pitchers. Lifting it up, she found the pitcher full of cream and, before another thought could enter her mind, began gulping it down. Relief flooded through her.
Forgetting she was in some stranger’s home, she sat down and began devouring the pears and apples. There was something else beneath the table… a broth… cold and unappetising… but she finished the entire bowl.
Suddenly Sakina felt a pain deep in her stomach and a dizziness came over her. She heard the sound of coughing from somewhere nearby. She stood up and tried to run but stumbled, confused, and fell onto the floor. Unconscious.
*
She woke up in a clean, tidy bed. Suddenly the thought came to her that she had been kidnapped and taken somewhere… but she quickly felt reassured that she was safe there. Again she heard that weak cough, this time followed by a skeletal figure entering the room. Back in her village, Sakina had seen many people suffering from starvation but this man seemed distinct to all of them. The same helplessness was in his eyes but not the desperate desire for a grain of food. She had seen starving people whose gaze revealed a naked and ugly hunger but in this man’s eyes she could only sense a tattered veil, behind which he looked at her fearfully.
Sakina ought to have been the more frightened one but instead he looked scared. Shyly, haltingly, he said to her, ‘I stood a little way back while you were eating. Uff! I was trying so hard to stop coughing, so you could eat in peace and I could keep watching that pretty view a little while longer. Desire can be such a lovely thing. But I find I am excluded from such a blessing… actually no, not excluded… for I myself have killed off this feeling inside me.’
Sakina was dumbfounded. Understanding nothing. The man seemed to be speaking in riddles wrapped in puzzles. Ones that would only become more convoluted if she tried to unravel them. Yet, despite everything, she felt small embers of kindness glowing in his words.
Reassured, she began to tell him her entire story. He sat and listened in silence as if her story had had no impact on him. But as she started to thank him, his eyes suddenly filled with tears and, in a choked-up voice, he said to her, ‘Stay here Sakina. I’m not well, tuberculosis. I can’t keep down any food… any fruit. You stay and eat and I’ll watch you.’
Suddenly he began to smile sheepishly.
‘What rubbish! Imagine what anyone else would think if they heard me say these things… eating and watching… no, no. Sakina, I mean it from the bottom of my heart. Please stay.’
Sakina turned it over in her mind.
‘Sure… no… well what I mean is you’re all alone in this house and the thing is that I’m all…’
This seemed to wound him and for a while he sat lost in his thoughts. When he spoke, his voice sounded hollow, ‘For ten years I’ve been teaching at a girls’ school and I have always thought of them as my own daughters. You… you could be just like one of them’.
Sakina felt that she had nowhere else to go and so she accepted the professor’s offer.
*
He lived for another year and a few months. During this time, despite being ill, he busied himself with providing Sakina every sort of comfort. Restless. As if the post was about to be collected and he was a man frantically finishing his letter, scribbling every thought that entered his mind onto the page. As a result of this much needed care and attention, Sakina blossomed within only a few months. After some time the professor started to keep his distance from her, but it made no difference to the care he lavished on Sakina.
In the final days his condition deteriorated quite suddenly. One night, as Sakina slept nearby, he leapt up and started shouting ‘Sakina! Sakina!’ startling her. The veil that used to hang behind his sunken eyes was no longer there. In those days, Sakina observed a deep sorrow in his gaze instead. That night, his trembling hands reached out for Sakina’s as he spoke:
I’m dying, Sakina. But I’m not sad about it… I feel like I’ve died a hundred times inside already. Do you want to hear my story? Do you really want to know exactly what I am?
Listen. I’m a liar. A huge fraud. I’ve spent my whole life lying to myself and fashioning those lies into my own truth. What an unnatural, inhuman thing to do that was!
I managed to kill off one of my desires but I didn’t realise that I would have to shed more blood soon after. I had thought that one was enough but eventually I would have to shut each and every door to desire in my body.
Sakina! What I’m telling you is a load of nonsense, not a moral tale.
The truth is that I had always tried to maintain my reputation while secretly being bogged down in depravity. I’ll die yet this will still cast a shadow over my grave. Every girl that I taught at school would remember me now as an angel walking among men. I imagine that you too won’t forget my generosity.
But the fact is, ever since you came into this house, not a moment has passed when I haven’t been stealing glances at your youthful beauty. How many times I have kissed your lips in my daydreams… or laid my head on your shoulder. But each time I had to rip these images to pieces, burn the pieces to ash so that not even a trace of them would be left in my mind.
I’m dying. If only I had the courage to display my character in the circus now, so people could gather round and learn a decent lesson from it.
After recounting his story, the professor lived for only five more days. According to Sakina, he had seemed quite happy before his death. Just before his final breaths, he had said only this to her, ‘Sakina, I am not a greedy man. These last five days of my life have been more than enough for me. I am grateful for you.’
Saadat Hasan Manto [1912–1955] was one of the finest short-story writers in Urdu. He produced 22 collections of short stories, a novel, five series of radio plays, three collections of essays, and two collections of personal sketches. He is best known for his stories about the partition of India, which he opposed, immediately following independence in 1947. Manto was tried six times for alleged obscenity in his writings; thrice before 1947 in British India, and thrice after independence in Pakistan, but was never convicted.
Ali Yusufzai is a civil servant in the UK who has started dipping his toes into the vast ocean of translating Urdu literature into English. He has poetry published in Pakistan’s Aleph Review and literary essays in Bad Form Review.